The Brief: What happens next with Brexit

Formal Brexit negotiations between the EU and UK may not begin until June, about a year after Britain’s vote to quit the bloc.

The UK today said it will firethe starting gunon Brexit by triggering Article 50, the legal process taking the country out of the bloc, on 29 March.

Four to six weeks later, in late April or more likely early May, EU leaders will meet at a European Council summit. They will issue negotiating guidelines to the European Commission for the divorce talks.

Council President Donald Tusk, who is responsible for arranging summits, has said he will issue draft guidelineswithin 48 hoursof Article 50 being invoked. These will form the basis of the text handed to the executive.

There is no date set yet for the summit and the timing could be influenced by the French presidential elections. 28-29 April was mooted by some sources as a possible date. Earlier plans for a 6 April special Brexit summit were ditched.

The EU-UK talks cannot begin once the guidelines are set. Member states must first approve more detailed instructions and hand the Commission a formal mandate.

That will put more pressure on what is a very tight timeframe for Brexit. Article 50 allows two years for a deal to be struck. Without a deal, Britain will crash out of the bloc in what some have said will be “the hardest of Brexits”.

The Commission has called for the talks to be finishedby October 2018, to give time for the Brexit deal to be ratified by national parliaments and MEPs before Britain leaves in March 2019.

“We are ready to begin negotiations,” Commission Chief Spokesman Margaritis Schinas said at today’s midday press briefing. “Everything is ready on this side.”

As Schinas spoke, the Commission’s Brexit boss Michel Barnier was hosting a technical seminar with EU-27 diplomats. The subject was customs controls post-Brexit.

All the main players in the forthcoming talks were with him in Brussels. Except the British ambassador.